Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Those vicous creatures have an odd taste for starships of every kind. They spend their time mostly hibernating, at least 17 to 20 hours per day (earth time), but whenever they are awake, my captains are simply too scared to leave docks unscorted.

Their modus operandi consists of preying upon any miniatures left unwatched for even a moment. Our last report from the outer watchposts confirm that their most recent assault was on a Klingon Battlecruiser, rendering it almost unrecognizable. Our HQ had lost contact with that ship moments earlier, and we feared the worst had happenned...

So, a little advice to you folks out there: Beware of Space Pets of any kind! They are savage, ruthless and show total disregard for the small fortunes we spend on our fleets...

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

When I started collecting miniature spaceships, I honestly thought I would be able to get all the miniatures I wanted in a couple months and then quit increasing the collection, and then there would be just a matter of rejoicing over the models of my all times favorite ships.

Not long after that, I realised such task wouldn't be that simple... There are so many great modellers out there, and so much great stuff constantly coming out on the hobby that at a point I realised I would probably never cease wanting something else!

That was when I understood that my collection would be one of ever growing fleets...

Currently, I have many fleets on my plans (check the "Next Purchases" section of this blog), so many that I project that I'll only complete them by the end of the year. By then, I'm surely gonna have my eye on some fleets else. And this goes on and on (welcome to the crazy world of a collector!).

As for now, I'm working on getting the following fleets done: Centauri, Dominion, Cardassian and Federation.

The Cardassian and Federation are almost done. The first is going to get a reinforcement of Keldons and Hidekis, from Studio Bergstrom. The second is prety much complete, I just need to do some paint improvement before showing them here.

The Centauri and Dominion fleets on the other hand, are still mark zero, but are ordered already and will be on their way here very soon. I'm still thinking about the color scheme to go with those 2 fleets, but before that, let's take a look on some in-universe facts about those 2 races:

Centauri Republic

The Centauri are a humanoid race where males have funny haircuts and female have no haircuts at all (they're bald). Now, seriously, they're one of the major powers in the Babylon 5 Universe, and are arch-enemies with a reptilian race called The Narn.

Centauris are proud people, and possess a powerful armada to project their interests across the galaxy. The core of their fleet is comprised of Vorchan Warcruisers. They are among the most popular designs from the Babylon 5 Universe (probably the most popular, along with the Minbari Sharlins). We can see a squadron of those half-moon shaped ships fighting narns on the picture above.

Their warships are painted on violet and golden. I'm just not sure yet how dark/clear I want those colors to look on those ships. Thus, I did a little searching on google and found some interesting painting jobs on Centauri miniatures.

Pardon me for not posting the images here directly, but I didn't ask the owners for permission, and I wouldn't post them without it.

Dominion

The Dominion is a multi-racial civilization from the Gama Quadrant in the Star Trek Universe. They are a major power on the series, posing a threat to all Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers togheter (!)

On top of the social pyramide are the Fouders, a shapeshifting race. Right below them are the Vorta, humanoid beings that govern the empire on behalf of the Founders. Finally we have the Jem' Hadar, which are the warroir cast within this collective, always ready to give their lives in battle for the Dominion.

The models for my Dominion Flet will come from Ender, at http://starshipadversaries.blogspot.com/. They look fantastic on photos, and I'm sure they're gonna look ever better to me when I have them on my bare hands!

One problem I had was that Ender's Battleship is so huge that it would be going to look blatantly out of scale with the rest of my miniatures. But I managed to solve the issue with myself.

The thing is, Ender's Battleships is in scale with the rest of the ships he makes (1/7000 scale), and since the battleship is suposed to represent a 1,5km long ship, you can have an idea of how big the miniature is...

But there is a single image on the Deep Space 9 show that laid ground for an unending discussion about the acuraccy of that assumed size, and it is the image above. It shows the battleship on a scale much bigger that on any previous pics, portraying it at about 4,5km long (!).

This inconsistence on the show led the opinions of fans to split into 2 main cathegories: Those who simply disregard the incoherence of this specific scene, accounting it for an attempt to add dramaticity to the battle; and those who took this battleship as a larger version of the regular one.

We here at My Ever Growing Fleets (and by "we" I mean pretty much just me...) fall into the second stream. After all, if it is in the show, then it is official and cant be disregarded!

But I went over all this discussion just to explain how I managed to be at peace with the size of my future miniature: I'll take it to represent the 4,5km version of the Battleship, and so I'll give it game stats correspondent to such massive size!!!

As for the paint scheme for them, well, I'll try to stick to the in-show colors the best I can. Looking forward to being able to begin the job on those goodies!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

I finished painting the planets, so I set all scenery stuff in place for some pictures. I have many more lava rocks ready to be based, but there were simply not enough flight stands for all of them to show up in the photo(!).

The terrestrial planet. Fortunately, the dark blue arrived Friday, so I got to finish it in time to take it to the gaming club for a little show off...

Thursday, July 14, 2011

My space mat finally arrived! It's huge, I had a hard time finding a place at home where I could lay it down fully open for the picture below.

This is a blue version of the Red Nebula I mat from Corsec Engineering. Jonathan, from Corsec, kindly agreed to design this on for me, since I like blue better. It does look nice, doesn't it?!

Along with the mat came a bunch of acrylic spheres which are gonna represent planets/moons. This is how they look right now, almost finished:

On the left, we have an yellow-colored ocean world (very alien!). On the center, a rocky world, like mars. The one on the right is earth-like, but still need a dark blue paint for the ocean (I'm expecting the paint to arrive tomorrow...).

This blue one is (supposed to be) a gas world, like Neptune. In my defense, it looks better on flesh (not much better, though...)

And here we have the moons. I think they look pretty decent!

Last Saturday I met the folks from the wargaming club of Curitiba, the Tropas Polares (Polar Troops). Very nice people! They play anything that goes boom, although they are not regular space battle gamers.

I'm planning on getting some to play with me, so I'm gonna take my scenery stuff (mat, asteroids, planets) over the club next Saturday to get them to start enjoying space gaming as well!

PS: My Imperial Fleet is still in the dry docks, and will probably be finished by sunday.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

As I wait for my Space game mat from Corsec Engineering to arrive (http://www.corseceng.com/), I decided to create an asteroid field to enhance my future game board.

Jonathan Bowen, from Corsec, advised me on the lava rocks for that matter, so I went out and got a bunch of them, for about R$5,00 (U$3.00).

Since it's such a hard rock, I couldn't get to drill a hole on them, so I decided on using a wash to work as a mount where to attach the peg.

The washes I found were a bit too large for the pegs I have, so I filled them with green stuff, after using super glue to fix the wash on the rock.

The flight stands I'm using for those asteroids are regular 1" hex stand. I removed their upper bits, to prevent them from breaking (those little parts are disasters waiting to happen, anyway).

The diameter of the peg after the narrower edge had been removed is exactly 3mm. After leaving the lava rocks aside for a couple hours so that the green stuff could harden out, I simply drilled out the green stuff with a 3mm drill bit.

Now, the flight peg fits perfectly on the wash.The little amount of green stuff left helps gripping the flight peg.

And there goes the Asteroid Field, ready for game deployment!

For basing my Micro Machines, I also use those common 1" hex stands with cut out peaks. I enlarge the miniatures mount hole with a 3mm drill bit, so to create enough room for the peg.

And there it is. Cheap and simple!

In both cases, the flight stands haven't been glued to the models/rocks, so they can be removed for easy storage. Still, when mounted on the flight pegs, the models/rocks are pretty firm, due to the nice grip provided by the hole being of the exact same diameter as of the peg.

Hope this helps those out there wanting to create their own home made asteroid fields!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Aside from being finishing my Cardassian and Federation Fleets, I'm also working on my newly acquired Battlefleet Gothic Imperial Fleet.
Battlefleet Gothic is a miniature spaceship game developed by Games Workshop, and takes place at the Warhammer fictional Universe. The 2 main fleets on the game are the Chaos and the Imperial.
Now, I've shown some pics of my Chaos fleet on the previous post, but the photos didn't do them justice, so here are some more.

The Planet Killer

Chaos hulks

I specially love those hulks. The've been kitbashed by Lackey Rich, from Battleworks Studios. By the way, Lackey, not Jeff - as I previously mentioned -, painted the chaos fleet pictured on the inaugural post.

The planet killer was assembled and painted by me. Those of you who know BFG might be wandering: "Wait a second, isn't that Armageddon Gun supposed to be upside down?" Well, yeah...

The thing is, I just checked some pics of the assembled killer after putting this one together. Only then I noticed my mistake. The reasons why I only looked for pictures of the assembled model AFTER doing the job on mine remain unknown... Even to me.

When I realized that, I went like: "Oh, man, I've pinned that gun on the main body! Now it's gonna be a nightmare splitting them apart!" But then I went like: "Wait a second, it actually look better this way, with this secondary gun on top of the main weapon, so I guess I leave it be...".

Anyway, now I'm taking the conventional approach with the imperial models: Checking for some pics DURING the process of putting them together.

Adeptus Mechanicus Battleship in the Drydock

Apocalypse Class Battleship

Part of the Imperial Fleet currently on the works

I'm not qualified to make my own review of the game rules, for I just recently came to learn the rules, never had a real game of it. But regarding the models, I can say that they are among my all-times favorites. Their design is utterly genius, simply magnificent.

I believe what I like the most about them is that anyone can look at them and know they are supposed to be spaceships - this is not always the case with many spaceship miniatures around.

It's just a pity that GW is not giving the game due attention nowadays. I don't think we are far from the day those models are going to retire from GW's product list altogether... Also, GW's policy of forcing costumers into buying directly from them (paying their horrific prices!) is another setback for those who wish to add these babies to their collections...

But since I love those ships I couldn't help from buying them. Lots of them. Currently, the imperials are mostly ready to be primed. Those of you who never tried to put one of the behemoths together don't know how exhausting it can be to assemble an entire fleet at once. Each of the bigger vessels take hours of work!

Add to this the fact that it is now winter here on the south hemisphere, and Curitiba/Brazil is really cold and humid this time of the year, so super glue takes forever to dry out! Man, sometimes it doesn't even seem to be glue at all!

Anyway, I post some pics of the imperials when they are all done and painted.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Since I really enjoy reading blogs about miniature starships, I thought I should give a contribution myself. So, as an inaugural post, here are the pics of some fleets of mine.

The Romulan Fleet

The Borg Fleet

The Ferengui Fleet

The Klingon Fleet

The Chaos Fleet

I wish I could take credit for that painting, but in fact I got almost all ships on this fleet already marvelous painted by Jeff Nall, from Battlework Studios. Only the battleships (most of them) and the Planet Killer were on me.

Chaos Hulks kitbashed by Jeff.

Pride of the Chaos Fleet...

Finnaly, the Galactic Empire Fleet.

There are lots of more fleet I'd like to show here, but some are still work in progress, so, they'll be showing up on the next months, hopefully.